Here Is Gone
by KickingRoses
Summary: The morning after 'Party'. Vince refuses to let the events of the night before be forgotton, as Howard claims to have 'moved on'. Oneshot. Rated for swearing and implied/potential slash, nothing more.


**Just a little one-shot drabble to give my brain a change from The Origin. Nothing graphic or that shocking, just pure emotion - mainly anger after Vince's rection from Howard, set the early morning after Party. It's pretty pointless really but I did my best. Reviews would be just lovely :) Thanks in advance.**

**Song of course isn't mine, it belongs to the gods that are known as the Goo Goo Dolls. I was listening to it today and thought it would sum up Vince's feelings nicely, in spite of the few seconds we saw on screen, there was definitely more. I also don't own the Mighty Boosh, their world or it's characters - Barratt & Fielding do, I'm just a fan writing out of devotion to their work, not for profit or anything like that. I ain't no Sugar Puffs monster. More of a cheerios girl. Enjoy!**

**Here Is Gone**

_**You and I got somethin'  
But it's all and then it's nothin' to me**_

Yes I know this is so out of character for me. I do apologise. But I'm trying to keep so damn hard to keep my usual cool yet I'm so desperate to yell his ears off. Not yell even, scream, with such aggression that I might crumble to the floor in a pathetic heap. But I dare not. Simply because nothing happening is making any sense to me as I look at the man in front of me. The man who I normally could just look at and feel safe in the knowledge that at least one thing in the world made perfect sense. But not anymore. He just stand there, seemingly unmoved by my attempt to bring up what happened last night. He looks at me as if it was just another hallucination from rancid coconuts. Speaking of which, I need a drink. Something that will knock me off my senses more than gone-off coconut milk. My head's a swarming mass of chaos and my throat is throbbing, without words when there's so much I need to say, if only he'd just hear me out. Problem is, I know he won't. Probably never will again, and where does that leave poor Vincy, ey? Besides receding back away to fit back into the role of 'platonic' room-mate, co-worker and friend. Nothing more, nothing less - apparently.

Howard's the cat that got the cream after receiving everything he clearly needed from last night. Which, as it turned out, wasn't me. I doubted that I was even so much as a constant thought to the maverick anymore. Oh please, God, help a mod out here! This is really Mission Impossible. I just can't do what Howard's doing. I can't keep hiding behind the first gorgeous electro girl that fancies a 'bounce' with me to try and show Howard' I'm over him when I'm clearly not. I can't force what happened out of my head, pretend it never happened. Because it did. And I've been waiting for him for so damn long. How can he make like he doesn't know it was there? From when I'd first laid eyes on him, I knew there was something special between us - I knew we had a true chemistry that was so powerful it made us fearful to admit to it's existence. Still, I knew we would. Some day. But when he did, and then I did, he took it all back and I didn't know what the 'ell I was supposed to do. Just go on living out every day, my lust for him growing and growing? I just needed to show him what I felt for him, prove to him what he really meant to me. The Shaman threatening my life had given me a way and I'd grabbed it with both hands. And now I don't... I don't understand how to do what Howrd did. How could he... Let me kiss him, thank me, fall with me and then tell me it's over before it's even begun?

_"Unbelievable! I've never been chucked by anyone in my life and now I'm being chucked by YOU?"_

Maybe I hadn't done myself any favours with that sentence but sod it. That was how me and Howard operated after all. Anything he served to me I thwarted back in his face. Our relationship an endless game of verbal ping-pong. And as far as I was concerned, I had every right to point out the humiliation of being knocked back by Howard 30-year-old-Virgin Moon - even if that was the last thing on my mind as I'd stood there in the wake of his cruel rejection. The rage that had boiled inside me had merely forced me to release the alien bitterness growing inside. Not bitterness over who was rejecting me. Why?

_**And I got my defences when it comes  
To your intentions for me**_

However the deep drilling in my chest is more than enough proof of the reasons themselves. He thinks it was just a mistake. He reckons I was just using him to escape death because he was the nearest to me at the time. That ain't it. Christ, if only he knew what he did to me... And my motivation for making the move where hardly the ones I had planned. But it was motivation all the same. I just... I needed to know what he'd do - one way or the other. Except we'd both been brought together that night on the roof and I was never prepared for that. God knows what I was expecting - him to scamper off in fear most probably? Well I'd been close. It wasn't as if I'd been expecting him to take me in his arms or anything, but then I wasn't expecting all this to come tumbling out like it did, like some brew bubbling over the surface, spilling out violently. 'Spose I never grew up as properly as any normal person to gain a real grip on these emotions - Christ's sake, how is a kid who was raised in the forest by a musician supposed to have a clue about any _real_ emotions. I mean the ones I feel around Howard. Happiness, confidence, hope - all these are just instincts to me. But these other feelings are special. I both love and fear them, the same way I know Howard does. We really are two halves of a whole.

Barely a minute after we locked lips and, with the appearance of some jazz-loving girl - who I'd PAID to give the Northern freak attention in the first place, the little whore - waltzed in and suddenly I was cast aside like last minutes' fashion. At last the tension between us had taken our relationship to it's logical conclusion - and then it was over. Howard dumped me. ME. Vince N-fucking-oir. And I even tried to pull him back to focus. I just wanted him to see sense, to realise how good I could we could be together, like we were clearly always meant to.

_"I thought you loved me-"_

_"That was a momentary lapse, Vince."_

_"Listen, fiddler on the roof, we kissed up there!"_

_**And we wake up in the breakdown of the things  
We never thought we could be.**_

Cringing, I remember how desperate I'd sounded as the words slipped freely out of my mouth. Howard just had to be lying. I know what he might have thought of me after all that had happened lately, but I know Howard, better than anyone could ever could or will, and I know that his big speech on the roof about his first time being 'forever' was true to his heart as his love for those god-awful jazz records. That's what this all came down to, him and his pitiable denials - nothing to do with me.

We were thrown back to the present. The party over. The guests gone...most of them anyway. I stood in front of the half-dressed Howard, whilst I remained in my outfit from last night, resembling only half of the Dancing Queen that had made that magnificent entrance into the room the previous night. My hair was now dishevelled (still looking good, mind), my silver circlet at an angle, my dress crumpled and my perfect face sunken in and smudged with make-up. Living up to my Shoreditch Vampire reputation today, ovbiously, in contrast to Howard's face, who was strangely glowing, but having to supress it under the sight of me - his best friend - who'd cornered him in the living room whilst he'd just been popping out of his room to turn the central heating up. My eyes were probably doing a good enough substitute.

"You said that I showed you the 'gift of love'. That I'd flicked your switch and all that nonsense!"

Unknowingly, I'd given him a clear path to his next reason. Easy mistake, Noir. I never wanted to hear his reasons, listen to him talking himself out of this whole idea when I knew we could be so right together.

"And that's all it was, just nonsense. We're just mates, Vince, that's all." he hissed desperately.

The sting of those words were almost as sharp as him saying before that I'd been his best friend for ten years, I couldn't change the rules with that. Only I have - we both have. And I admit I'm not always the sharpest tool in the picnic basket but I still somehow managed to notice how he chose to sum us up so simply this time, just patting the subject off like a spec of dust on the shop counter. So all that rambling about 'the molten sexual tension brewing up between us through the years of bickering and arguing' was all a discarded theory now, was it? The only thing keeping us, two people who couldn't be at further opposite ends of the spectrum, together amongst all the difference is - what? Just _friendship_? Clearly nothing to lock us to each other and stop Howard from being so easily distracted by some fellow geeky jazz bird coming in and giving him the most attention he's got from a woman since leaving home. I let him know that the reality of what we are has come to the surface now. No point in trying to bury what everyone (well, the moon and the Head Shaman) has seen.

"'Just mates' don't snog and then proclaim their love to each other!"

He so knows exactly what I want, he knows how much it would change us over what we've been to each other over the past ten years. If needs be then I'll refuse to be his co-worker anymore. I won't be his just his fucking 'best friend' if that's what fear it takes to get him to 'fess up. But he's allowed to be scared, bless him. I never for one moment thought he'd be any other way... It's **Howard** after all. Just the sight of how lost and intimidated he looked last night amongst all the people who didn't know his name made a part of my soul want to reach out and comfort him. But has he not thought how crushed I was at realising how bare I was laying my soul to his rejection on that bouncy castle? He's trampled all over it, and yet I still love him. How was I supposed to just go back to pretending we're so much less than we really are?

"What happened to you being 'over it' once that Camden dollybird pranced into the garden?" Howard's voice was shrill with accusation.

I just scowled. To hell with what excuse I'd made up just to get out of that humilating situation as all my friends were about to join us in the garden. Of course I wasn't over it. And neither is Howard. I'll prove that if it kills me. The cream poet tightens the rope of his robe and rolls his eyes.

"Look it was my first ever kiss, Vince, alright? I just got confused!"

"You said your first time would be forever, '_sir_'!" I snarled, sleep-deprived and thirsty.

"Yeah well I'd just been shown up as a virgin at my own fucking 32nd birthday party - I think I had every right to be a bit OTT in defending myself."

"It was just **_me_** there though on that roof, Howard."

"What difference does that make?"

Then it stabs me deep like a chav's flickity knife. He actually thinks I'm no different than that shallow self-obsessed lot that came to the party last night. I'm not Vince Noir, his one and only friend anymore, I'm just one of them. And what hurts more is that he made it sound like that was his only reason. Like if that jazz slut had never walked into the room, I don't think it would have mattered. I don't think he'd have cared, or be so desperate to hide the truth of his real self from me. I'd so hoped he'd have given me a chance. I mean, what's the point in trying to hide himself from me of all people? Doesn't he get it by now that I've watched and studied him for the past ten years, learning all his means and ways and faults, and just having grown as in love and obsessed with each moment? I know we belong together- except now he's finally getting some attention with the opposite sex for the first time in three decades, and I - the one person who has loved him for all these years - is to be put in second place to them. I couldn't have that. Vince Noir came second place to nobody.

_**I'm not the one who broke you,  
I'm not the one you should fear  
We've got to move you, darlin'**_

And that's what's so sad. Because I know we could have worked. If Howard had listened to me at all, then he'd know I'd give anything to trying, if he'd just given me once chance to prove it to him. He won't though. And it was all down to some evil succubus I had unknowingly set upon Howard because I had the bright idea to try and convince Howard to have a stupid party, so I'd have the opportunity to express how I really felt by the end. I can't see anything special in that girl. Not that she's any of the electro glittery types I go for like the pretty little thing who I used to console myself on the bouncy castle last night after Howard's rejection. But I just don't get it with this bird of Howard's. I mean, she hadn't even shown up at most of the party. And yet, as soon as she waltzed in at her own pleasure, Howard's eyes had bulged as if someone had presented him with an elbow patch when rubbed made the sound of a saxophone. And I was the idiot that had paid for the slag to appear in the shop. And I can't remember why. Because now I've tried, for the first time, to show Howard what he means to me, but typical Howard; he's running terrified. And I've pretty much handed him the best distraction for him to ignore what went on between us. If anything he's now back to resenting me for having been such a bitch these past few months, mainly ever since we started work at the Nabootique together. From the prostitution incident, to me breaking his beloved jazz record and then getting him fired - ok I suppose they were pretty shitty things. So now, I guess I'm getting just what I deserve. But I had my reasons for being so mean with him - because I'd had enough of trying with him!

_**I thought I lost you somewhere,  
But you were never really ever there at all**_

Why won't he understand that I could be so much better for him than some girl he doesn't even know? I wanna be the one to make it better. I'd agreed with everything he said on the rooftop, once we'd landed, because I could see how happy he suddenly was. And I'd done that to him. I'd made him that happy, and that had brought it all out into the open for me. The cards were laid out on the table and I had a royal flush. (That's good in poker, right? Maybe I should stick to speaking in Snap! Terms).

_**And I want to get free, talk to me!  
I can feel you falling  
And I wanted to be  
All you need  
Somehow here is gone.**_

I know he's not gonna listen anything I say now, is he the big Northern git? Not because he's distracted by the whore waiting in his room still. But because he don't want to. And however much I want him, can tell him I love him - if he don't wanna hear it, he won't. He's got a talent for that. Selective hearing, something he learnt off the master, yours truly. And if he ever realises how much he's killing me on the inside, then I know what I'll get. 'Cause if there's one thing I have learnt from this life of messed up insane adventures and life threatening situations was that you were always given a choice. And I'd just thrown the one I truly needed away. Now what? A beautiful 'BFF' smile that will have me wanting to throw myself off that roof? Or descending into further bitchiness and cheap insults at each other. There'll just be no soddin' point in me ever talking to him, because he'll never listen to what I mean to say. And if he keeps running, then how the hell am I ever gonna get the words out, know what it is I'm supposed to do for the better?

_**I have no solution to the sound of this pollution in me.**_

No way, in the name of Jagger, am I gonna hold myself souly responsible for this guilt. I never did this on my own. OK, so I'm the one that kissed him but it was him who followed with the great declaration afterwards. And I played fair. I sounded doubtful at first, not because it was just an act, but because I couldn't believe the words were finally spewing out of Howard's beautiful mouth. It tortured me, but I was prepared to push back, for us to leave it at that and let Howard make sure his mind wasn't just going on a one-off emotion-driven whim. But he'd gone to kiss me the second time. And then we fell, clinging to each other, more than happy to die in such a perfect way. Only instead we'd been saved by the present I'd put my heart and devotion into buying for my best friend, bouncing on the inflatable castle before landing together, side by side. But Howard never said a word of thanks, or a mention of what had just happened and I thought our new path before us was clear. But it's not. He says it was just a 'momentary lapse'. What goes on the roof stays on the roof. So for me, I guess what part of me was so contented and happy up there is still waiting on that roof, the poor idiot.

I suppose it's just karma. I used Howard to save my life and he in turn used to me to experience a real kiss just to get him set to go on the girls, and like the tit I am, I asked for it. _How stupid can you get, you twat?_ He was never really gonna be mine; but bloody 'ell, if he'd just tell me what was going through his head... I can't be shut out, that's all. He just has to understand that I meant it. It wasn't just to trick the head Shaman. I love Howard.

_**And I was not the answer,  
So forget you ever thought it was me.  
I'm not the one who broke you,  
I'm not the one you should fear  
We've got to move you, darlin'  
I thought I lost you somewhere,  
but you were never really ever there at all**_

_**And I want to get free, talk to me!  
I can feel you falling  
And I wanted to be  
All you need  
Somehow here is gone.  
**_  
Forever I'll be trapped in this piss-take of a reality. I don't know how to stop just because Howard won't admit that he feels anything outside this "_platonic_" bullshit. But Howard has to feel the way I know he feels. He can't let me do the things I did last night and then say it meant nothing. Because to me, for the first bloody time, I actually felt something in a kiss. The Thunderbolt - is that what they call it? Those things really are genius, and not just for looking cool on your clothes. They were what made a kiss…a _kiss_. But now Howard's denying ever having felt that. Maybe he's too scared to think on what it'd be like if he tried to be with me. What did he have to be scared of? Hadn't he realised from the zillion times I'd risked death to save his life that I could be strong enough for both me and him? I'm not like the idiots I hang out with. Sure I've acted like one recently but, at the end of the day, I was just Vince. _His_ Vince. **Always** His Vince. And I needed him. Oh just to hear him say he wouldn't change what happened last night for the world. Just that small sentence, _please_…

It never come though. I just stand there, confused and lost as ever. Who is to blame really? Howard? The jazz girl? Or me? Had I pushed Howard into her arms - with more than just the money? The jazz girl was such a crawl twist of fate, that had ruined everything I'd dreamt of for last night. Had it been because of the potential future I'd brought into his life? Fuck the future. The past makes the present and it's always been me and Howard. Always has been. Always will be. Without him there's absolutely nothing. That is apart from the social admiration that, in all honesty, meant fuck all to me compared to Howard But I really believed that, tonight, as we made kissed beneath the moonlight that we were sharing in some sort of truth. But Howard lied. From the moment he began telling me his epiphany after the kiss. I can't stand lies. Not from other people anyway. Only my lies have the finesse and wit to be used in life professionally.

_**And I don't need the fallout  
Of all the past that's in between us  
And I'm not holding on  
'Cause all your lies weren't enough to keep me here.**_

My only honest wish is for Howard to admit the truth, admit there's something between us, that's building up for so long, that could be something more wondrous than all the magic we'd happened to encounter in our lives. Admit it, and not take it back two minutes later. It was always there, and it'll always be there, otherwise I wouldn't be having these thoughts. Howard can try to fight, but he won't be able to hold up these pretences forever. He'll let himself break eventually - Howard really is a rubbish actor. Hence why he can't lie for all the paperclips in Stationary Village. It feel the strength it's taken for him to fight this. Yet he's pleading to be locked away in these emotional cages again, because he doesn't know any other way to handle them, the social noob. As much as I wanted to smack his lights out then, it was no where near as much as I wanted to hug the life out of him, to set him free.

_**And I want to get free, talk to me!  
I can feel you falling  
And I wanted to be  
All you need  
Somehow here is gone.**_

Unfortunately for Howard, he has to realise, this isn't gonna ever disappear. It will haunt him as bad as that stupid Spirit of Jazz curse thing. Love is love, my friends, and it's stronger than any magic I've come across in my strange enchanted life. It's as bad as the flu and leaves me shivering beneath my covers, weeping silent tears at the chances I've let slip by. Time and time again. I tried dousing it with the bickering, the teasing, involving myself in the social scene and drenching my mind with as much alcohol I could bring to hand, but it doesn't work. It didn't work because the 'love' those people had for me was the blind love naïve fans gave to a celebrity who didn't even know your name. It's utterly fake. What I feel for Howard is real, so much more real then my own image - I know that more than ever now.

"You can't say what you shouted up on that roof last night was all in my mind, Howard. No matter what way you look at it - You. Kissed. Me . Back."

"No I didn't. I didn't even know how to kiss back." Points for brutal self-honesty, I didn't think our Howard had it in him.

"Well you didn't pull away, and I felt you _smile_, you lying ball-bag."

"You've gone wrong, Vince. So very, very wrong. Try and get some more sleep, little man, and we'll just forget all about this."

"…There's only one wrong thing about this, Howard. And it ain't me."

Shrugging my attempts to reconcile like we should have last night, Howard gives me an almost pitying look (how more wrong can you get?!) before going off back to his bedroom to join his sleeping prize from the night before. And soon I'm left drowning in my sea of envy. I realise that this one, bright glimmer of potential was scrapped, and my heart is lying in a thousand broken shards in my chest. Yet I know that wherever it is Howard runs to, that same feeling will find him and trap him as it did me a long time ago. That jazz-loving cow will leave him as dejected and broken as ever. And when that time comes when the maverick finally admits to defeat, like I did last night, he'll fall once more through the air to find that I'm not clinging onto him next time. But instead I'll be waiting at the bottom in the place of the bouncy castle. Arms out. Ready to catch him. Ready to embrace the perfection and, next time, never let it go for all the hats in Topshop. It _**will**_ happen again. How am I so sure of myself? Firstly, because I'm Vince Noir. Secondly, because that cheeky bitch of a word 'destiny' springs to mind.

_**But I know it's out there,  
I know it's out there  
I can feel you falling**_

_**But I know it's out there,  
I know it's out there  
Somehow, here is gone.**_


End file.
